Created thirty years ago in the wake of the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and fifty years after the Nuremberg trials, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) tried 79 accused for the genocide of the Tutsis perpetrated in 1994. Thirty years after its creation by the United Nations Security Council, this page of international judicial history has still not been closed.
7 mins
From our correspondent in The Hague,
On November 8, 1994, when the UN Security Council adopted resolution 955, the Rwanda is bloodless. In the legendary room of the United Nations building in New York, the States present are already hoping that the judgments of this future tribunal will help “ reconciliation » in Rwanda. Two years later, the first detainees entered the doors of the ICTR, based in Arusha, Tanzania. The mayor, Jean-Paul Akayesu, the boss of the “hate media”, Ferdinand Nahimana, then “the mastermind” of the genocide, Théoneste Bagosora, were the first to sit in the dock. They will later be followed by the former Prime Minister, Jean Kambanda. Repentant, the man pleaded “ guilty » of genocide. The ICTR’s heyday also includes the first international conviction for genocide, handed down against Mayor Jean-Paul Akayesu.
In thirty years, the ICTR has prosecuted 93 Rwandan officials. Sixty-two of them – ministers, officers, militiamen – were convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The others were either acquitted, tried elsewhere, or died before their arrest or trial. They are key players in genocide of the Tutsis. But the ICTR will have only accomplished part of its mandate. Planned prosecutions of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, the rebellion that seized power in July 1994, were never successful.
Endless justice
Technically, the ICTR closed its doors on December 31, 2015. But the UN set up an International Mechanism (MICT) to succeed it, whose functions are almost identical. This mechanism, which also manages the last files of the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), operates with 300 employees and 65.5 million dollars per year (nearly 61 million euros). Unlike the courts, he cannot initiate new proceedings. However, it must ensure the protection of witnesses interviewed under pseudonyms during trials, process requests for review, enforce sentences, and assist national courts which try suspects arrested on their soil. At the end of June, the UN renewed the mechanism until June 2026. But for almost ten years, it has not finished its work.
The fugitives
Since May 15, the Mechanism no longer has a single fugitive. The prosecutor’s tracking team managed to prove that the last two on the list of 93 Rwandans indicted by the ICTR over the years died a few years after their flight from Rwanda. The best catch remains the arrest of Félicien Kabuga, in May 2020, in the Paris suburbs. Arrested after twenty-two years on the run, the businessman will not be tried. The judges suspended the trial opened ten months earlier in June 2023, after establishing that Félicien Kabuga suffers from dementia of cardiovascular origin. The ex-businessman is still incarcerated in The Hague, because no state has so far agreed to welcome him on its soil.
Investigators were also able to snag another trophy in May 2023, with the arrest of Fulgence Kayishema in Paarl, South Africa, at the end of a long standoff between Pretoria and the ICTR. The police officer’s file had been referred by the mechanism to Rwandan justice, and South Africa, whose relations with Rwanda are not in good shape, did not wish to extradite a Rwandan national to Kigali. Fulgence Kayishema is therefore still detained in Paarl.
Mechanism closure schedule
While the international community is calling for a timetable for closing the mechanism, the tracking team is still at work. Kigali asks him to “ help national courts and tribunals search for remaining indicted fugitives »by Rwanda, declared diplomat Robert Kayinamura in June before the UN Security Council. Kigali is looking for more than 1,000 suspects, and accuses Western countries of letting them exploit refugee status “ to enjoy impunity “. The ICTR prosecutor supports the regime in its hunt. “ Our national colleagues know that people who committed genocide live in their country with complete impunityassured Serge Brammertz, in June 2024. And they know that every case involves victims and survivors who are still waiting for justice. » But the hunt for the perpetrators of genocide is sometimes confused with the hunt for opponents of President Paul Kagame’s regime. In February 2024, Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), signed a report on the transnational repression of opponents, denouncing “ the control, surveillance and intimidation of Rwandan refugees, diaspora communities and others abroad [qui] can be attributed in part to the authorities’ desire to crush dissent and maintain control “.
The application of sentences
Today, it is the mechanism which acts as judge for the execution of sentences. The convicts serve their sentences in the prisons of third states which have signed an agreement with the UN. But it is the magistrates of the mechanism who grant sentence reductions, or to whom prisoners turn when they have problems in detention. But Kigali believes that those convicted should serve their sentences in its prisons. However, according to Human Rights Watch, cases of torture and ill-treatment have been recorded there, even if, the organization specifies, the perpetrators of these abuses have recently been punished. Rwanda hopes to welcome ex-detainees, acquitted or released after serving their sentence, and who live in wandering, due to lack of agreement on a host country, where their families are sometimes refugees. A real headache for the Mechanism. After several years spent in a “ safe house » of Arusha, Niger nevertheless agreed to welcome them. But the deal collapsed following protests in Kigali and just days after the arrival of eight of them, the police confiscated their papers and they are now living under house arrest. Whatever the guarantees from Kigali, these Rwandans, who were in charge of the country at the time of the genocide, refuse to join the Mille Collines for fear of reprisals. “ Thousands of former perpetrators have served their sentences and today coexist peacefully with their fellow citizens who have survived », Defends Kigali.
The battle of the archives
In more than twenty years, the ICTR has recorded thousands of hours of testimony and evidence. However, the question of the location and conservation of these archives, which has been debated for fifteen years, has not yet been completely resolved. Kigali is fighting to get their custody. “ The three decades since the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi have seen the rise of a new generation of Rwandans, also known as the post-genocide generation. », explained Kigali before the UN Security Council in early June. A generation that must be able to benefit from this “ immense historical heritage ”, according to Kigali. As if to avoid making a decision, the Security Council asked the UN Secretary General to submit a new report within a little over a year. With the tribunals for Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and even the Central African Republic, the UN plans to centralize the archives. They play a key role in the fight against genocide denial and divisive ideologies “, President Gatti Santana told the UN General Assembly on October 16.